iPhone 7 boots postmarketOS and Ubuntu, becoming the first Linux-running Apple smartphone [updated]

Update 01/2021: A video showing an iPhone 7 running Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME desktop has been released, bringing further ground to consider this the first Linux running iPhone

Let us face it: six months ago, nobody would realistically have expected a proprietary Apple iOS device to become a Linux smartphone.
However, as we have seen in the previous weeks, the seventh generation of Apple smartphones has seen successful efforts of reverse engineering by the Corellium/Project Sandcastle developers, up to the point of booting proper Android 10 with LCD and touch screen support, and now postmarketOS Linux as next.

In fact, could an OS that runs on motorbikes, pocket calculators and "smart" dishwashers not enter the unexplored wonderland of Apple proprietary chips at some point?

There is little more to say than what we already did in our previous posts on the (unbelievably fast) progress of Linux on the Apple A10 proprietary SoC, so we will simply link to the port author's blog for (slightly) more information on how you can already try booting postmarketOS on your iPhone 7 today.

We will make sure to update this article as soon as the device lands in the official "testing" repository of this so versatile Linux distribution.

UPDATE: the iPhone 7 can now boot to graphical interfaces as well. See Wayland and Weston in the post below, plus some more instructions on how to install it and get USB serial shell to work. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are probably going to be implemented as next steps.

If you want to stay tuned on the world of Linux smartphones, you can follow TuxPhones on Twitter and Mastodon, or join our subreddit to have the latest news from our community.

Via: postmarketOS chat rooms / Reddit